When Nicola Adams first put on boxing gloves at her local gym as a tiny schoolgirl of 12, bouts between two women were banned by the British Boxing Board of Control. They were too unstable, went the reasoning, on account of their menstrual cycles, and besides no one wanted to see a pretty girl get hit.

On Thursday, 17 years later but not a great deal taller, Adams finally gave her response in the ring, emphatically defeating the Chinese world champion flyweight Ren Cancan to become the first woman ever to claim an Olympic gold medal in boxing.

She had only gone to the gym that day because her mother had an aerobics class and could not find any childcare.

Britain may be getting accustomed to gorging on medals, but the country's 24th gold, courtesy of Adams, is more significant than most.

When the IOC ruled in 2009 that women's boxing would be in the London Games, 11 years after the BBBC was obliged to lift its unequal ban, the former world champion Amir Khan said he was against the move, saying: "When you get hit it can be very painful."

On Thursday he was ringside, paying lavish tributes, with everyone else, to the skill and dexterity of the female fighters.

Once London's festival of sport has come to its conclusion, there is little question women's boxing will be reckoned one of its great successes. It is not merely the ferociously supportive crowds the sport has drawn – even if the most vocal bellows have been reserved for Ireland's Katie Taylor, who took lightweight gold shortly after Adams's bout – but the respect the competitors have commanded, among boxing ingenues and experienced sports devotees alike.

As recently as March this year, the International Amateur Boxing Association (AIBA) was threatening to force women boxers at the Games to compete while wearing skirts "to help distinguish them from the men".

Immediately before Adams's bout, Ching-Kuo Wu, the AIBA president, said the Rio Games would almost certainly see the number of divisions at which women could compete at the Games double from three to six. London's women fighters, he said, were "heroes in boxing history".

As Adams stood on the podium to claim her gold, four days into women's Olympic boxing history, the exclusion before now of women from the sport already seemed as ridiculous as the bar, until 1984, on their running the marathon. Did she think she had answered the sceptics, she was asked later?

"It's not me that's answered them, it's the crowds. They have been cheering as much for us as they have for the lads."

If she could inspire young girls to think boxing was also open to them, she said, "that's amazing". She added: "That's what I want to see. More girls getting into boxing and participating."

The martial metaphors, already tiring 13 days into these Games, are inevitably over-exercised when it comes to women's boxing, but in Adams's case, talk of punching through glass ceilings and battling her way out of adversity seem particularly apt.

After her first bout at 13, she did not compete again outside her Leeds gym for four years thanks to a lack of opponents. There were no women's clubs when she started, and when two teenage girls tried to compete in a bout in 1997, Lennox Lewis called it a freak show; the Daily Mail, inevitably, a "bout of madness".

She was first introduced to the sport by her boxing-mad father, Samuel, watching the Rumble in the Jungle and other legendary bouts on VCR and becoming entranced by Ali.

She didn't really stop to think that girls didn't box. "I was so young I wasn't really into the politics," she said after her bout. "All I saw was Mohammed Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard, and I just wanted to do what they did."

She turned pro at 18, became the first woman boxer to represent England, and went on to win two world championship silver medals and become European champion in 2011.

It was the more impressive given a catastrophic injury three years ago, when she fell down stairs while walking to the ring before a bout, and cracked her vertebra. She went ahead with the bout, and won, but was so badly injured she was confined to bed for three months and unable to fight for a year.

"When I had my injury it was really hard to think I was ever going to get up to boxing speed, to be able to go as quickly as I did before. But I have improved on how I did before, and come back stronger." How did she account for that? A shrug. "I was always determined that I would succeed."

Described by her mother, Dee, as gentle and a "mummy's girl", Adams is just 5ft 5in, and, to fight in the 51kg category, weighs less than eight stone. She is also an irrepressible smiler, beaming as she entered the arena to huge cheers from the crowd.

At their most recent encounter, in the world championships in May, she was defeated by Ren, but her victoryon Thursday was emphatic, at one point knocking her to the floor, though her Chinese opponent was quickly back on her feet.

The Brits, waving union flags, chanted her name, and in perhaps the greatest mark of respect, the Irish crowd, expectant for Taylor's bout immediately after hers, even lent her a chorus of "Ole! Ole! Ole! Ole!" in the second round. As the final bell sounded she was still throwing punches, a tiny ball of energy.

Adams's hopes that more women will go into boxing will almost certainly be helped by her success at the Games – and the visibility of Britain's other competitors at these Olympics, Natasha Jonas and Savannah Marshall. British women received £1m of funding in 2009 and Adams had a generous living allowance and the full support of the boxing set-up at the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield. Her success is likely to mean that funding is increased.

She said: "There's an option of going professional, but I'm happy with the amateur game. Rio is definitely an option for me. It would be nice to see their opening ceremony." Besides, she said with a smile, "We haven't yet had a double Olympic champion in boxing for the females. There's definitely some motivation there."